Get the Guy
by Acqua Sole
Summary: A university is a great place to find love. Four young students happen to fall for the same boy, and decide to take their chances in a winner takes all competition for his heart. The trouble is, the guy in question doesn't want anything to do with love...and will try his hardest to stay out of a relationship at all costs.


The cover image is official content from NITRO CHIRAL; I am merely borrowing it for the purpose of giving this story a cover. DMMD and all its related content belongs to NITRO CHIRAL.

This has been a disclaimer.

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**Love Interest**

(ləv|ˈint(ə)rist)

NOUN

1 A theme or subsidiary plot in a story or film in which the main element is the affection of lovers.

2 An actor/character whose main role in a story or film is that of a lover of the central character.

I let out a frustrated growl and threw the dictionary as hard as I could before I slumped back into my seat with a sigh.

Isn't it every person's dream to be well liked? To be so beloved by all that people practically scramble over each other to get a seat next to them? To get anyone to do something for them with just a snap of their fingers? Heck, if that isn't one of the most unattainable dreams to ever exist, then I could certainly discount all the times many different people over the ages had told me the exact same thing.

I suppose that I'm lucky, in a twisted sort of way. Many people can't make friends – well, if you could call them that – as easily as I can, and I'd found myself on the receiving end of more than one desperate person pulling at my sleeves and begging me to teach them all that I knew about attracting others, keeping friends, being able to talk confidently to a crowd, _wooing_ even.

Ha. As if _I_ were capable of teaching that kind of stuff!

My issues with relationships extend beyond petty crap like being afraid of getting burned, of not saying the right things at the right times, or, gods forbid, finding The One (as if that concept wasn't already a notion that desperately needs to be tossed into a bin).

No, my problem is that pretty much any person I get close to, even grow friendly towards, becomes almost inevitably infatuated with me.

Yeah, that does sound like something straight out of a bad romance novel, right? "The protagonist that other characters can't help but fall for" and that kind of bull, another trope that needs to be junked. As if anyone is so instantly lovable that attraction is a given regardless of what kind of flaws (or the obvious absence of them in those kinds of books) that character has. But yeah, I did pretty much flat out say that's what I've got going on. In my case though, it's really more of a curse than a blessing. Why would it be, though, if getting others to hang off your every word is pretty much a life goal for tons of people out there?

Not in my case though. You see, I've never really been much for romance. It doesn't _repulse _me or anything like that. I'm not a little kid who's afraid of getting cooties or the douchebag who sleeps around all the time but "doesn't believe in commitment." I'm a bona fide aromantic. The reason I had that dictionary with me in the first place was because I was, well, confused. I thought it was impossible for a human being to not be attracted to other people; that maybe it was abnormal of me to not feel much when seeing couples in a lip lock on the street or get all fluttery when listening to gushy music on the radio.

So I asked. The school psychologist, my old paediatrician, heck, even the local paper's advice column all got questions from me, and they all said pretty much the same thing: "you're aromantic, it's not an abnormal thing, and you won't die from it."

I looked it up in the dictionary, too, every time I got told that. And right in that big, shiny new 2014 edition of the school supplied book, it says:

AROMANTIC

(árəmántik)

ADJ. and NOUN

1 Devoid of romance

2 A person who experiences little to no romantic attraction to others.

_See _SEXUAL ORIENTATION and ROMANTIC ORIENTATION

It was a confusing thing to learn, actually. I mean, romance is such an embedded thing in society that even though it's analysed and stuff, people think that its existence is a given for everyone. Entire industries have been built around it, too; chocolates and presents for your special other on Valentine's Day and White Day, planning the perfect wedding in complementary colours, wining and dining others to get them to have sex with you, hell, even flowers and crummy old cards for when you mess up and have to show just how sorry you are by buying them more shit.

And it's not even just buying and selling crap either! People _love_ the idea of love. They love love so much that it's a thing, it's a genre in almost every thing we see and do every day, even the way we think and talk. The shōnen and shōjo manga that always shows the guy getting the girl, and even though the plot is always the same, people eat that stuff up. The top 40 billboard songs with the same friggin' lyrics about pining for someone or moaning about a lover's betrayal. The prince always gets the princess in the movies, and it doesn't matter if they've only known each other for 110 minutes of screen time, they're always meant to be.

When you really enjoy something, you say you _love _it. When something's pretty or nice, it's _lovely_. And just for being an all around nice person that happens to appeal to everyone for some reason, suddenly everyone's calling you _loveable. _

Don't I sound so terribly nasty and bitter? I'm not. I'm just honestly sick of this worldwide infatuation with love. It's not what it's all cracked up to be. It's capable of ruining peoples' lives, and it's come so very very close to doing that to me before and it's dangerously close to doing that to me now.

Remember about that issue I said I had? About me being an aromantic who somehow manages to attract everyone? The majority doesn't believe that love just doesn't exist for some. It's everywhere for them, so it must be everywhere for people like me too.

When I try to explain that it's actually not true, they call me a liar. They say garbage like me being afraid of looking for a relationship. That I must have been hurt so bad by a past lover that I'm just one of those types who's sworn off love because of some made up trauma.

_Horseshit. _

Love and the ideas of love that many have about it do funny things to them. They're so sold on the concept of love, they so very much love the idea of love, that they see it everywhere, even in the tiniest of gestures.

(Have I already said that before? Whatever. It's still the same topic).

When you pay attention to people, they start paying attention back, right? And when you do share that, when they show this interest in you and become all friendly and nice, they now feel as though they're attached to you. That whatever attention you pay to them suddenly has all these romantic implications, and since they're so obsessed with seeing love everywhere, it must mean because you want a relationship with them.

What's worse is that people can be humongous jackasses. When they decide that they love you, they suddenly feel as though they're _entitled _to you just because they respond to you. You now suddenly _owe_ them something even though you don't even know others think of you in a certain way.

It's become such an awkward thing for me. Getting confessions left and right in high school, giggling and staring wherever I happen to be. And when I tell them that I don't like them like that – when I've tried to tell others that I'm personally not capable of loving them they way they want me to – they get _angry_.

The shit I mentioned about people saying I'm just traumatised over commitment? Happened three times in the past two years. Making someone cry because I refused them? Happened twice in primary school and once in a club I went to. Then there's The Incident that Happened Last Year, something so bad I will never ever mention in detail, but I'm covering it right now just to round up the list of many examples I have to offer.

I wish I could be one of those gutsy types that aren't afraid to say how they feel. The kind of person who is so dedicated to sticking by their own values that they just go through life living it how they want to, no matter what kind of opposition they get from society.

But of course, that's just not me. I'm just a chickenshit kid who's lost so many friends over this whole romance business, and gained so many bullies from it, that I've just learned to keep quiet. I've learned to act as neutral as possible so that people can't get any ideas when they're around me – but like I said, I have the freakish ability to somehow attract hordes of unwanted suitors, so it doesn't matter if I help them pick up books they dropped or smile at them or whatever; they suddenly want to be with me, I try to explain to them _I just don't feel that way about anyone_, and then I have another mess on my hands.

Last year's whole fiasco was a great reminder as to how bad going against the status quo can really get. Going back to that school is never an option, not after that. So like the chickenshit kid I am and not the brave nail that sticks out that I want to be, I ran instead of confronting the wreckage I left behind me.

The new university, the one I'm transferring to in a month, is on the other side of the island, hopefully far enough from my old neighbourhood so that I can get a clean start. A new campus, new house, new faces to meet and hopefully, new friends that I can actually keep this time.

Hopefully, all that newness won't turn into the same routine I've come to expect all my life, with people trying to shove me into relationships I don't want or give me labels they try to dig out of crummy old dictionaries like the one I tossed. I don't want to reinvent myself, but I'm just dying for the chance to leave all the bad things in the past and have a normal, stress-and-romance-free life from now on.

I, Aoba Seragaki, promise to make this the best school year ever for me, and get out of any possible romantic tangles that will hopefully never ever pop up, or die trying.

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**DESPERATE**

(ˈdɛsp(ə)rət)

ADJ.

1 Reckless from despair.

2 Extremely dangerous or serious.

3 Feeling or showing a hopeless sense that a situation is so bad as to be impossible to deal with.

3a Staking all on a small chance.

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Hello there! This is the first fanfiction I've ever published – though certainly not the first one to write – and hopefully you've all enjoyed the first chapter so far.

Since DMMD is a game with mechanics based around a "choose your own story" format, especially by pairing Aoba to one of four (five if you include Ren, seven if you include Trip and Virus), it really is basically a game about relationships and shipping. I wondered what would the game's dynamics be like if Aoba wasn't interested in pursuing anything of a romantic nature with any of his options – and that's how aromantic Aoba was born for this story! Hopefully I've characterised him well enough this way, and please notify me if I haven't really, in case any of you readers are on the aromantic spectrum.

Additionally, it would be helpful for you guys to have TV Tropes open while Reading – I'll be referencing it a lot, since the chapter names will be, in essence, tropes, and it's a useful reference for a fic that's trying to poke fun at the idea of romantic relationships.

For this chapter the definition would be:

**Category Traitor** – a character belonging to a certain group is deemed as such when she/he/they do something considered to be against the group.

Reviews are very much appreciated!


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